26

FIRST LECTURE.

her own father , Agamemnon . Timanthes, fay Pliny and Quintilian with furpriling fimilarity of phrafe,when, in gradation he had confumed every image ofgrief within the reach of art, from the unhappy prieft,to the confcious remorfe of Ulyfles, and from that to thepangs of kindred fympathy in Menelaus , unable toexprefs with dignity the father’s woe, threw a veil, or

if you will, a mantle over his face.-This mantle, the

pivot of obje&ion, indifcriminately borrowed, as mightealily be fuppofed, by all the concurrents for the prize,gave rife to the following feries of criticifms:

* Before I conclude, I cannot avoid making one ob-‘ fervation on the pictures now before us. I have ob-‘ ferved, that every candidate has copied the celebrated‘ invention of Timanthes in hiding the face of Aga-4 memnon in his mantle; indeed fuch lavifh encomiums4 have been bellowed on this thought, and that too by1 men of the higheft chara&er in critical knowledge,—1 Cicero , Quintilian , Valerius Maximus , and Pliny, —>

* and have been lince re-echoed by almoft every modern4 that has written on the Arts, that your adopting it1 can neither be wondered at, nor blamed. It appears4 now to be fo much connected with the fubjedt, that4 the fpe&ator would perhaps be difappointed in not

* finding united in the pi&ure what he always united

f in